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Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Warren Buffett: "Grexit May Not Be A Bad Thing For The Euro"

"If it turns out the Greeks leave, that may not
be a bad thing for the Euro. If everybody learns that the rules mean something
and if they come to general agreement about fiscal policy among members, or
something of the sort, that they mean business, that could be a good thing” –
Warren Buffett.

“I’ve thought that the Euro had structural
problems right from the moment that it was put it in, which does not mean it
will necessarily fail. You can adapt to those structural problems, but maybe
some countries won’t adapt and they won’t be in. It’s not ordained that the Euro
has to have exactly the members that it has today” – Warren Buffett.

Charles Munger, vice chairman at Buffett’s
Berkshire Hathaway Inc., criticized Greek citizens last week for trying to vote
their way to prosperity.

Buffett told CNBC that, over time, the countries
in the euro area would need to better coordinate their labor laws, fiscal
deficits and general management of their economies. “It can’t continue with
people going in dramatically different directions,” Buffett said. “The Germans
are not going to fund the Greeks forever.”

5 comments:

Perhaps not a bad thing for the Euro, and perhaps not a bad thing for Greece. The stagnation the country has been in for more than a year now, with all the confused "negotiations" is a nightmare. Nobody has an idea of a way forward. Tsipras just wants to restore the Greece of 2009.

The country needs a big bang. That should have come years ago. But Greece was "bailed out", "saved" and "helped" instead. Without knowing what to do the governments gratefully jumped on the Troika waggon.

Instead of running around and shouting (anarchists, pensioners, unionists) like mad chickens the Greek people should try to figure out what they want their country to become:

Syristan, the last paleo-marxist soviet republic run by orthodox communists, some kind of Balkan North Korea,

a national-socialist populist experiment created by graduates from Essex University, a grand union of leftist and rightist anti-movements without any pre-formulated plan at all

a part of a Russo-Byzantine Empire, a xenophobic and homophobic Christian Orthodox vasall state led by some Governor like Kammenos.

All these alternatives are in the air. But what's it going to be?

One thing is clear though: the chance for Greeks wanting their county to become a liberal, market-oriented European country with a competitive reformed and financially sound economy is almost zero. But maybe a grexit might help to clear their minds.

Greece needs to look forward and not backward as it is now, with all the committees being formed to find out whom to blame, investigate and prosecute for one thing or the other in the past.

All of your negative comments are equally applicable to the eurozone leaders. Their vision for Europe is not the vision of the peoples of Europe; it does not make sense even economically, only for banking and big business is there some semblance of credibility; and the relationship of current elites to democratic process is about zero.

So, feel free to criticise the new Greek government. But you might care to pay some attention to the appalling record of northern European governments and the progress of their economies and societies.

"One thing is clear though: the chance for Greeks wanting their county to become a liberal, market-oriented European country with a competitive reformed and financially sound economy is almost zero."

I am quite sure the collective subconscious in Greece is aware of that but it is also aware that the other alternatives are not exactly fun either. This is one of the dilemmas making a solution so complicated.

To Anonymous: Cannot understand the negative comment on your comment. I consider all you write as sharing your thoughts, and if they in other people's opinion are negative, is not because you are negative yourself, but writing about a negative situation that you did not create.You are philosophizing.That is excellent. You are "discussing" the subject, and that is a phenomenon of, or even a synonym for "democracy" (Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia)

Being Dutch (EU), living in Norway(treaty country), I feel European, but as a free thinker, I am not addicted to not any political system, and though I thought I was a democrat, when reading about democracy, and what Socrates and Plato said, I can only agree with them. Because of my own life experiences and wisdom that has grown out of it. But wisdom never stops growing. So, I am still learning, as we all do.

~

Socrates openly taught that the principal fault of democracy was that it did not require proof of special knowledge in its leaders, that it surrendered the direction of the people’s destinies to men without adequate experience in government, and that on the question of the morality of justice of a policy it treated the opinions of all citizens as equal in value.

From:Socrates and DemocracyPublished: July 29, 2001By: David W. Allanhttp://www.allanstime.com/Government/socrates_democracy.htm

"One thing is clear though: the chance for Greeks wanting their county to become a liberal, market-oriented European country with a competitive reformed and financially sound economy is almost zero."

I am quite sure the collective subconscious in Greece is aware of that but it is also aware that the other alternatives are not exactly fun either. This is one of the dilemmas making a solution so complicated.